April update and photo dump

Hello dear blog, It has been too long! I have tried to write a couple posts lately, but my brain has just been too fried.

The past couple weeks have been brutal for me. I am so close to finishing school, but the amount of work that needs to be done and the time I actually have to get it accomplished is daunting.

Nevertheless, I am awake early this morning and the the sound of the birds rejoicing outside and the smell of the earth after it rained all night is positively renewing. God is teaching me that my perception of my life and circumstances relies so much on the attitude that I choose to have. I can either choose to let my circumstances overshadow my God or I can choose to allow my God to overshadow all of my circumstances (thank you pastor Kurt :)

School is stressful and I am so ready to be done (two weeks baby!), but everything on the adoption front is going very well. We are at the point now where we can't really "do" anything until we get our fingerprinting appointment date.

Sunday night we checked, checked, and rechecked our documents one last time for any mistakes, arranged them in the correct order making sure we had EVERYTHING, kissed them, prayed over them, and then yesterday we took them to the post office to send them to another Reece's Rainbow family that will deliver them to our Eastern Europe (we are not allowed to disclose our boys country yet) facilitators on May 13th when they travel to go adopt their precious one.

You may think that we are overexaggerating our affection for that stack of documents, but please understand that pile represents so many answered prayers I could just cry looking at it. Although invisible to the naked eye, those docs are covered in our blood, sweat, and tears. There were so many times that I doubted we would ever be able to get everything done.

God is SO faithful!! Praise You Jesus!!

Ryan and I laid our hands on them and thanked and praised God for His faithfulness. We asked Him to protect and watch over them and the family that is delivering them for us. Those of you who have never undergone the adoption process may be confused so let me explain. These documents make up what is called our "dossier". Our dossier consists of 35 documents including medical statements from our doctors, financial records, employment statements from Ryan's work, power of attorney's, our beloved home study, and so much more. Our dossier is what matters to our boys' country. It is what they will look at when deciding if we should be allowed to adopt two of their children. They are extremely picky. Every t must be crossed, every single i must be dotted, every date correct, everything must be notarized, every notary stamp must be in the right place, nothing smudged or crossed out, and then everything must be apostilled by the secretary of state in the state which it was issued (yeah, it was alot!). It truly was a joyous evening of celebration in our home!! I told Ryan that I was nervous about sending it away, but never have I been so glad to get anything out of our home haha.

So now we wait... and we fundraise!!

Because of the cost of plane tickets and just finding out that we will have to purchase them for both Ivan and Levi as well (even if they sit in our laps the whole way home!) we will need to raise more than we originally planned.

God willing, we will be launching our awesome giveaway tomorrow! You will not want to miss out, so be on the look out!!

But for now, I think today seems like a good day for a photo dump of life in the Maxwell home (someday I will be able to say house :) this weekend.

ENJOY!!

On Friday we FINALLY got some of the Spring weather we've been waiting for.

Landon loved being able to have the door open. He didn't crawl outside unless I was out there, but he just sat and watched the world.

 Once Ryan got home we walked to the mall.

We brought Landon to the play area for the first time. He loved it!!

Saturday I got home from a baby shower and found a hysterical husband screaming about a helicopter landing by our apartment. He told me I just missed it taking off. A couple minutes later it came back so Ryan grabbed Landon and we ran outside to get a closer look. Turns out it was giving tour rides all weekend. Ryan was like a giddy little boy haha

Landon didn't quite know what to think of it

Later that day we walked to the park.

Pure JOY!

 Worked up an appetite playing hard

I love how he crosses his legs when he eats haha

Normal activity for a Sunday afternoon.

Can you tell he adores his papa?

Landon's OT told us to try walking with him, but just letting him hold onto a pen or something so he still feels secure, but has to do all the work himself... yeah, he nailed it :D

We'll have a walker in no time!

A couple wobbles, but he didn't fall once!

Someone is awfully proud of themselves!

 He is just like his mama and must stick his tongue out to concentrate haha!

We are so proud of our little man!! Hard to believe those chubber legs used to be in the 3rd percentile.

We will never take our miracle for granted.

Praise God from whom all blessings flow!


Remember to check out our giveaway launch tomorrow!!